Census Properties

Where this started

A new agency in a market where the usual listing is a price, a photograph and a telephone number. Nothing about who owns the place, or whether the permits exist.

So the brief was to make the paperwork the product. If a buyer can see what has been checked before they ring, the call starts somewhere better than the asking price.

What we built

• A register of 24 neighbourhoods across Durres and Kavaja, each one its own page in Albanian, English and Italian, and any two of them set against each other.
• A map of the bay drawn into the site rather than fetched from a tile service, so a page about local property owes nothing to anybody else to render.
• Search that keeps its state in the address bar, a shortlist that leaves as a WhatsApp message, and prices readable in euro, lek or dollars at dated rates.
• 4 calculators and 5 buyer guides per language, where every figure either carries a dated source or is shown as unconfirmed and kept out of the total.
• An office system where saving a listing writes a commit, so the record of who changed which price, and when, is the repository itself.

What a listing has to show

Each one prints the documents behind it: what was checked, and what is still outstanding. The gaps are as easy to read as the claims, which is the point of publishing them.

Photographs and a price are what every agency in the town already shows. The paperwork is what almost none of them do.

The paperwork, printed beside the price.

Updated 7 October 2026